Over the past week, BetterLesson and Founder/CEO Alex Grodd have received some generous and noteworthy attention:

In the latest issue of Education Next, Bill Tucker calls BL a “promising new entrant” in the education technology space and notes our “slick” technology and user experience.  Tucker goes on to quote the director of digital learning at Achievement First ­— one of our premium customers — who says BL’s platform fits nicely within AF’s existing culture of coaching and collaborating.

As part of a new series on education innovators, Education Week blogger Sara Mead interviews Alex about his motivations for starting BL, where he sees the site in a decade, and who has influenced him. In her introduction, Mead writes that BL has the “potential to leverage the highest-quality instructional content and connect teachers so that they no longer feel alone.”

Finally, Alex, Chris Cullen and Erin Osborn attended the NewSchools Venture Fund 2011 Summit, where visionaries like Netflix CEO Reid Hastings, Khan Academy founder Sal Khan and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed and debated the future of education. NewSchools, which has provided generous support to BL since its start, honored Alex as one of two 2011 Entrepreneurs of the Year. Alex and the entire BL team are humbled by the distinction.

We’re excited about the attention and the feedback that has followed. Stay tuned via Twitter, Facebook and this blog for future updates.

Update 4/23/11: We wanted to send you a quick update that our Amazon server cluster continues to be down as of this morning. Our tech team is working to bring the site back manually and is on pace to do so by midday tomorrow (Sunday). Again, many apologies for this huge inconvenience. We will be taking many measures to ensure it never happens again. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us (using the email link on our home page) if you have any questions.

Love,

The BL Team

Update 4/22/11: We want to update you on the status of BetterLesson. Due to the outage Thursday at Amazon’s web servers, we are still offline. The latest messages from Amazon are that significant progress has been made, but that we still may be waiting for a good amount of the day before a full fix is in place.

Like many other organizations, we rely on Amazon for its highly-regarded and (until this outage) reliable services. You can read in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal about the major disruption this outage has caused across the web.We’re deeply sorry for the inconvenience this creates for teachers. We’re doing everything we can to resolve this issue from our end, and we’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Love,

The BL Team

From 4/21/11: The BetterLesson site is currently down due to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) issue. Thousands of sites right now (some notables include Quora, Foursquare & Reddit) are also experiencing Amazon-related outages. We're in contact with AWS and will get the site back up and running as soon as they resolve the problem.

We want to note that Amazon has been a great partner for BetterLesson and is among the most popular and reliable hosting services. This is not in any way a common occurrence. Here's a brief news article about the outage.

Thanks for your patience! We apologize for the inconvenience, and we'll keep you posted.

Love,

The BL Team

This fall, BetterLesson launched partnerships with leading school networks across the country -- KIPP, Achievement First, Rocketship Education, and ReNew Schools -- as well as The Achievement Network, an interim assessment organization working with over 200 schools.  Earlier this week, we released user and content metrics about the first semester of use.  To read more about the Premium Networks we're building out for school networks and to get some usage stats, click here to read the full release.

This past fall, we launched our Premium Intranet Package, which offers school networks an effective way to share instructional content and practices within and across their organizations.

To date, premium customers include KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program), Achievement First, Rocketship Education, ReNew Schools, and The Achievement Network, an interim assessment organization working with over 200 schools across seven regional networks.

Our Premium Intranet Package differs from the traditional closed-off intranet model: it offers all of the intimacy and security of a traditional intranet but is built on top of our free and open BetterLesson platform.  Teachers can choose to share resources within their organizations or with the broader BetterLesson community.

Features include customized branding, analytics, professional development video tools, and the ability to curate and feature content.

If your school network is looking for a better solution to share high-quality instructional resources across schools, please contact our Director of Outreach Erin Osborn at erin@betterlesson.org.

The Google TechTalks panel includes (from left to right): Geoffrey Canada (President, Chief Executive Officer, Harlem Children's Zone), Richard Barth (President, Chief Executive Officer, KIPP Foundation), Ted Mitchell (President, Chief Executive Officer, NewSchools Venture Fund) and Alfred Spector (Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives, Google). It was moderated by Craig Nevill-Manning, an engineering director at Google.

KIPP's Richard Barth begins a discussion about BetterLesson around the 45-minute mark and NewSchool Venture Fund's Ted Mitchell follows up.

Teaching + 30 from GothamSchools on Vimeo.

Left to right: Nick Ehrmann - Blue Engine; Elizabeth Green - GothamSchools; Dave Levin - KIPP; Jose Ferreira - Knewton; Joel Rose - School of One; Becky Crowe Hill - formerly of Partners in School Innovation; Alex Grodd - BetterLesson

NBC News is currently hosting a summit in Rockefeller Plaza, NYC, about improving education in America.  Check out the program schedule here: NBC's Education Nation.  

One of BetterLesson's Featured Educators, Jim Larson, has the privilege of attending as a delegate from Charles A. Tindley Charter School (Indianapolis, IN).  You can check out his profile and curriculum on BetterLesson: Jim Larson.  Highly recommended for 7th grade ELA teachers.

For the summit, Jim submitted an opinion piece on the "culture of reflection" in the teaching profession. Read it here: OPINION: Lessons Learned by James Larson.  If you'd like, you can contact Jim by sending him a message through his BetterLesson profile.

Our very own Alex Grodd joined some great minds in education to discuss what teaching might look like in 30 years. A nice snapshot of the panel:

(Note: Alex Head Scratch Shot)

Panelists included:

Becky Crowe Hill, Exec Director of Partners in School Innovation, 2003-2009

Dave Levin, Co-Founder of KIPP

Joel Rose, Founder, School of One

Jose Ferreira, CEO Knewton

Alex Grodd, CEO BetterLesson

To learn more about the event, check out the event's invite: Brooklyn Future Meetup Group +30 Years

We're using a new blog.  To see old posts, please go to oldblog.betterlesson.org.